North Dakota Preps

After about 10 days of practice time, any comments on how teams are developing? The annual crossover is this weekend in Jamestown, any comments/predictions yet? Seems like things ought to be starting to be predictable soon.

St Marys
Century
High
Mandan
Minot
Jamestown

Those bottom three teams are all garbage and it could go in any order after the Bismarck schools.

South
North
WF
Shanley
RR
Central

I didnt actually see RR play, but they looked like a JV team with the size of those kids. Plus they played three absolute crap teams. South didnt play very well, but is still the favorite with loads of talent. I only saw North play Mandan and they controlled the game, although I dont think that means much. WF played great possession ball and should have easily beaten High, but a ball that came out of nowhere somehow fooled the keeper. They played pretty equal to Century in their second game.

Here are my rankings after watching almost every team play on Saturday...

West
1. St. Mary's - Solid spine of players with Fladeland, Stecher, Barch, and Gilchrist. But lots of kick and run still, little possession. One major injury away from being non-contenders. Gilchrist was absolutely stellar in net.
2. Century - Not good, but not bad. Good soccer skill.
3. BHS - Not impressed. Even in their win over West Fargo, they got dominated.
4. Mandan/Minot/Jamestown - Not good at all. Usually each of these teams have one or two players that stand out above the rest. I didn't see any from any of those teams. I see Minot making state, just because Jamestown doesn't have Boerger, and Mandan doesn't have anybody.

East
1. South - Loads of talent. Need to shake off the rust a little bit, and play together more. Favorites in the State.
2. North - Not too scary talent-wise. Reberg and their forward are their two players that stood out. Otherwise I wasn't too impressed.
3. West Fargo - Probably one of the best possessing teams in the state. They need to find a solid goal scorer though. Dark horse team for the state title.
4. Shanley/Red River - Didn't see either team play a lot, but they looked small. I will have to see more of them play. Shanley might just pip RR for the fourth spot, because they have more continuity and didn't lose as much as RR. RR lost a ton of seniors plus all of their coaching staff (save 1 guy).
5. Central - Not much to say, but they aren't better than any of the other eastern teams.

This is going to be a tight year in both the WDA and EDC. EDC has more talent and I would expect come state tournament time that there will be two east teams in the title game, one east team in the 3rd place game, and one east team in the 5th place game.

Looking forward to watching more soccer this year...

Thursday Aug 28 scores:
Shanley 3-2 over Crookston
Central 1-0 over West Fargo.

Not much decided there....

WF looked flat as heck last night without Moch and the other starting defense not playing. That being said if both teams played like they did, neither one will be making state.

Agreed about WF, they simply can't put the ball in the net. I didn't get to see the match since it was out of Fargo, but I heard about it.

And in most cases they say it isn't for the lack of trying...in this case it seems like they aren't trying to put the ball in the back of the net.

Moch is a leading force behind that team. I am sure him not being there just killed WF.

Did anyone see how Shanley looked in their match?

someone told me Shanley 3 - RR 2 any confirmation?

sorry but i was unaware moch didn't play against central. do you know y he didnt?

His sister was getting married in Colorado

Shanley beat Red River for the 1st time in I think it is 5 years behind Glogoza's Hat Trick!!

Shanley 3
Red River 2

Well played to Shanley, I didn't see much of the game, I kind of watched it out of one of my friend's apartments by the field but I didn't pay a ton of attention to it.

The East is going to be so tightly contested this year...there will be a talented team missing out of state, and some really talented players on two of the teams that miss out will be disappointed not to be at state.

Usually four wins in conference play will usually qualify you for state, but who knows. At least that's how it works in the west.

every team in the state is horrible compared to their team from the year before. the class of 2009 has to be the worst in a long long time. a good team left out of state? theres only 1 or maybe 2 good teams in the east. obviously south is the best but from there its a big drop off. north is probably considered good but tahts about it. soccer is boring this year

GFRR99 wrote:every team in the state is horrible compared to their team from the year before. the class of 2009 has to be the worst in a long long time. a good team left out of state? theres only 1 or maybe 2 good teams in the east. obviously south is the best but from there its a big drop off. north is probably considered good but tahts about it. soccer is boring this year

There is some talent in years to come, but you are right. There are a few talented players but no really, really talented teams. Might be boring to watch, but with only one really good team in the state, look for the results to be close.

Some big games tonight...

WF @ GF Red River
Central @ North
Shanley @ South?

I will be at the North-Central match, if anyone has updates on the other matches ya'll should post them...

South beat Shanley tonight 2-1!

Well...

Central tied North 0-0. I don't think enough people, including myself, gave Central enough credit. They are a scrappy team. As for North, Lapka is their only real threat, and sometimes their outside mids. It is easy enough to stay away from Reberg in the center, he wasn't much a factor at all in the game against Central.

I heard from a friend that WF beat RR 1-0 in the last 20 seconds of the game. Defender that was subbed in at forward scored the goal!

:O

shanley 3 north 2

Sept 9 in Grand Forks, South 3 Central 1final with Central 1-0 at the half. South still undefeated in East regional play.
















east

north 5 rr 1? any confirmation?

South still undefeated, and not looking to lose.

South 3
WF 1

First half, South was just battering WF and should have scored more than one. WF's keeper made a bad mistake on the one goal, though. WF tied the match up at 1-1 with a ridiculous turn and shot by one of their forwards.

Second half was all South, made some of the WF players look like they were playing in slow-motion.

South looks like the best team I have seen so far. What are the standings right now?

1. South
2. Central
3. Shanley
4. North
5. WF
6. RR

Can anyone confirm, or let me know what site to check the official standings? Thanks.

For the record I was the forward (AJ Kloehn) that scored WFs lone goal last night.

South was the better team, but you get someone that can run with their outside mids when they continually play dump and chase they will get beat. It seemed like once we got in the offensive third South's defense broke down. The problem was the other two-thirds of the field which South dominated.

Offcial standings can be found here http://www2.edutech.nodak.edu/edcsite/B ... occer.html

Agreed on the South point.

I haven't seen too many overly impressive teams in the East.

And looking at the statistics, South is the only one that is almost unreachable. The other three spots are open for four teams, ruling RR out because they have not looked good at all this year.

Well it's going to be an interesting last half of the season in the East.

South is up top, and has practically assured themselves of state qualification.

But then, it's like five points separate the next five teams. Shanley in Second. North in Third. Central in Fourth. WF in Fifth. RR in Sixth.

RR hasn't looked like they are going to state this year, but it's up in the air between the other four for three spots to state. Even though WF has lost to Shanley, North, and Central, they could have won all of the games, though I didn't see the WF-North or Central-WF match. I heard from a friend up in GF that it was close, but not sure about the North match.

My predictions. I think Shanley will stay in second, north in third, but I think WF will leap frog central into the fourth spot. Central and RR have to come down to WF the second half of the season, and WF should be able to take 2 wins away from those two games. It's all about how other teams do.

WF invite this weekend. I am hoping to make it to the St. Mary's-WF match on friday, and I am not sure the schedule for saturday for the teams but I will probably watch a couple of games then too.

Goals galore this weekend at the WF Invite.

Just some results that I got to see:

St. Mary's 1-0 West Fargo

West Fargo JV 3-2 Jamestown Varsity

Shanley 3-1 Jamestown

St. Mary's 3-3 Shanley

West Fargo 4-3 Minot

Detroit Lakes 3-0 St. Mary's

West Fargo JV 3-1 Mandan Varsity

West Fargo 7-0 Mandan

I have to admit, I didn't see many of the games in their entirety, because I was walking in between the two fields. Detroit Lakes was a surprise, as was West Fargo's JV squad.

The three best games were played between Shanley-St. Mary's, West Fargo-Minot, and West Fargo JV-Jamestown.

It was good to see some goals scored from all teams.

Looking forward to the second half of the season, it should be very interesting in both regions. Was anyone else at the invite?

Obviously I was there. All I have to say is this reassured me that the West is absolute crap this year. And Varsity teams losing to JV teams is pretty bad.

On another note, WF opens up the new field on Tuesday versus RR.

Shanley 4 Grand Forks Central 2 in the make up game for their previous which was rained out.